For vicarious copyright infringement (ie management should have known/prevented it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability), Oculus/Facebook/Carmack were innocent but Palmer Lucky and Brenden Iribe (before they founded Oculus?) were guilty.
For contributory copyright infringement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability, a "party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party." ), Oculus/Facebook were innocent but Iribe, Palmer, and this time Carmack were guilty.
BUT, the ruling then goes on to say that "the defenses of license or de minimis use bars Zenimax's claim for copyright infringement" for Palmer, Iribe and Carmack (but not for Oculus). So whatever Palmer/Iribe/Carmack did wasn't that bad, but the actual copying of code to the SDK by Oculus somehow merited $50m damages (I can't see why that won't get reduced substantially on appeal, no copy-pasted-code-to-an-SDK really caused Zenimax $50m damages.)
For violating the NDA Palmer Lucky signed before Oculus was even formed (but which was ruled to still be in effect after Oculus), Zenimax gets $200 million.
And for "false designation of origin", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin), where the manufacturer/seller lies about the origin of their products, Oculus was guilty for $50m, Palmer Lucky (the visionary founder) for $50m and Brendan Iribe (the CEO) for $150m. I'm not sure I understand the factual basis of what happened here, but having been in startups that deliberately obscured the origins/key parts of underlying technologies to angel investors, I can see the origins of product misrepresentations as being worthy of substantial damages as it really does affect Oculus's value and Zenimax's ability to be compensated for "their part". Probably will get knocked down too, but this is the most defensible part of the $ amount.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 63.5 ms ] threadFor vicarious copyright infringement (ie management should have known/prevented it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability), Oculus/Facebook/Carmack were innocent but Palmer Lucky and Brenden Iribe (before they founded Oculus?) were guilty.
For contributory copyright infringement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_liability, a "party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party." ), Oculus/Facebook were innocent but Iribe, Palmer, and this time Carmack were guilty.
BUT, the ruling then goes on to say that "the defenses of license or de minimis use bars Zenimax's claim for copyright infringement" for Palmer, Iribe and Carmack (but not for Oculus). So whatever Palmer/Iribe/Carmack did wasn't that bad, but the actual copying of code to the SDK by Oculus somehow merited $50m damages (I can't see why that won't get reduced substantially on appeal, no copy-pasted-code-to-an-SDK really caused Zenimax $50m damages.)
For violating the NDA Palmer Lucky signed before Oculus was even formed (but which was ruled to still be in effect after Oculus), Zenimax gets $200 million.
And for "false designation of origin", (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_designation_of_origin), where the manufacturer/seller lies about the origin of their products, Oculus was guilty for $50m, Palmer Lucky (the visionary founder) for $50m and Brendan Iribe (the CEO) for $150m. I'm not sure I understand the factual basis of what happened here, but having been in startups that deliberately obscured the origins/key parts of underlying technologies to angel investors, I can see the origins of product misrepresentations as being worthy of substantial damages as it really does affect Oculus's value and Zenimax's ability to be compensated for "their part". Probably will get knocked down too, but this is the most defensible part of the $ amount.